The objective of this project is to identify an agenda for research on issues relating to the role of Primary Health Practitioners (PHP's) in the delivery of health care to metropolitan and non-metroplitan people. (PHP's include nurse practitioners, physician assistants, MEDEX, and other similarly trained non-physician health providers). The mechanism for achieving this objective will be a conference of seventy-five people divided among practicing professional health providers, acknowledged non-government research experts in the field, and federal researchers and policy/decision-makers. The conferees will review the status of current research, seek a consensus on those research questions closed and those requiring additional research, and draw up priorities for a research agenda, which, if carried out, would provide the data needed to determine policies which would allow PHP's to develop their full potential as part of the health care delivery system. The format will feature carefully structured discussions of five major issue areas. Two papers will be prepared for each issue workshop -- one by a researcher and one by a health provider. The papers will be distributed to conference participants twenty days before the conference. Workshop leaders will be carefully selected for their knowledge of the subject research procedures, and personal activities in the subject under discussion. Each workshop, meeting separately, will consider the same general range of questions for their subject areas and prepare a report on their conclusions. The products of the conferences will be the ten issue papers, the five workshop papers, distilled reports of the various deliberations, and the conference recommednations. The recommendations will seek to provide researchers and policy-makers an agenda for research for the future as well as a consensus on what is now known about the PHP's role in the delivery of health care. This conference takes, as the starting point, the recommendations of the MEDEX/Primex Conference held in Atlanta in April of 1976, and the recommendations of the HRA Physician Extender Work Group.